Moral improvement

“ The chief good consists in acting justly and nobly, rather than in thinking acutely and profoundly. The free play of the mind is delightful, but the law of moral obligation is the deepest thing in us. Honor, place, and wealth, which are won at the price of self-improvement, the wise will not desire. Great opportunities seldom present themselves, but every moment of every hour of thy conscious life is an opportunity to improve thyself, which for thee is the best and most necessary thing. ”

“ And the moral nature is cultivated in laboring for the good of others, in trying to save for a better life the poor, the weak, the distressed. All that is required is that we do this work wisely, not unwisely, under the guidance of reason, not feelings. ”

“ The first of these is, that these remedies, one and all of them, are calculated for the elevation and intellectual or moral improvement of the people, but have no tendency to improve their circumstances, or diminish the load of pauperism, destitution, and misery with which they are overwhelmed. ”

“ They insist that any improvement in the conditions of human life must be accomplished, not through individual moral effort, nor through the propagation of truth, but through progressive modifications in the general material conditions of life. ”

“ There is an old, but ever new, question which has divided reformers, namely: whether moral advance, moral education character, in a word must precede the improvement in social conditions, or whether it is useless to expect moral conduct in an environment unfavorable to it, and therefore the proper business of reformers should be the modification of the condi- tions of life, the eradication of social wrongs and abuses. ”

“ Intellectual and moral growth is no less indispensable than material improvement. ”

“ It is not enough to ask what is most attractive, what line of life will ensure the greatest material gain or worldly honour? Rather should we ask, Where shall I be safest from moral danger, and, above all, in what position of life, open to me, can I do the most good? ”

“ Why not pay careful attention to man in all his elements of strength, physical, mental, and moral? Why not make personal purity a fixed principle in the manhood of the present and coming generations, and thus insure the best men the world has ever seen? ”

“ What I have to note is that, in any case, the change supposes the necessity of a corresponding morality in the growth of the instincts, the public spirit, the hatred of indolence, the temperance and self-command which would be requisite to work it efficiently. The organisation into which we are born presupposes certain moral instincts, and, moreover, necessarily implies a vast system of moral discipline. Our hopes and aspirations, our judgments of our neighbours and of ourselves, are at every moment guided and moulded by the great structure of which we form a part. ”

“ They concerned the powers and possibilities of man in the crowning endowments of his nature, and in the highest ascent of their evident intention and adaptation. They touched the great problems of personal and social welfare in the most vital relations and decisive interests. So the old sages became moralists and their great themes were the themes of virtue and duty. Not very deeply, however, did they, for centuries, succeed in penetrating the rational principles of the moral life and the authority of the moral judgments. ”

“ If you show a better way than theirs of doing work, teach them, too, why it is better. Thus will the mind be prepared by development for a moral reformation; there will be some soil fitted to receive the seed.
When the time is come,—and will you think a poor, uneducated person, in whose mind the sense of right and wrong is confused, the sense of honor blunted, easier of access than one refined and thoughtful? ”

“ LVIII. No other forces are to be recognized than those which reside in matter, and all moral teaching and moral excellence ought to be made to consist in the accumulation and increase of riches by every possible means, and in the enjoyment of pleasure. ”

“ The moral evolution of the social individual is from submission and obedience as economizers of effort and responsibility, and safeguards against panic and incontinence, to willfulness and self-assertion made safe by reason and self-control, just as plainly as his physical growth leads him from the perambulator and the nurse's apron strings to the power of walking alone, and from the tutelage of the boy to the responsibility of the man. ”

“ Satisfaction derives dignity from being controlled by the motive of good-will, while the moral kingdom at large derives its wealth, its pertinence to life, and its incentive, from the great manifold of particular interests which it conserves and fosters.
It is the formal rather than the material principle in life which defines the direction of moral effort. By prudence, purpose, justice, and good-will life is regenerated and urged, against the resistance of inertia, towards its maximum of attainment. ”

“ It is, in fact, the pleasure of exercising power. I do not mean arbitrary, personal authority, but the power to produce, by successful but quiet contrivance, extensive and happy results;—the pleasure of calmly considering every difficulty, and without irritation or anger, devising the proper moral means to remedy the moral evil: and then the interest and pleasure of witnessing its effects. ”

“ It is inquired for what reason a human being should engage in procuring the happiness, or refrain from producing the pain of another? When a reason is required to prove the necessity of adopting any system of conduct, what is it that the objector demands? He requires proof of that system of conduct being such as will most effectually promote the happiness of mankind. To demonstrate this, is to render a moral reason. Such is the object of Virtue. ”

“ Every moral rule, every sentiment, as also every institution, must be tested, from period to period, to see if it works still in a practical and healthful direction to help the individual [172] to do right and for the betterment of the race. ”

“ WE, desiring to improve public morals, must begin by reforming the heart of man; and in order to reform the heart of man, it is necessary first of all to place education upon a sound basis.
When man comes into being between Heaven and Earth, there are certain moral obligations in his daily life, which are for the learned and simple alike; to seek after the mysterious and to practice strange arts is not to follow the example of the wise and the worthy. ”

“ But with our resources of analysis and reflection, it is not difficult to discern that the various forces at work have been such as to preserve, in general, habits which made for the welfare of individual or tribe and discard the harmful ones. It is, then, not merely habits, but habits that matter, moral habits, with whose growth and alteration we are here concerned. What, in general, has been the direction of moral progress? We have noted the main causes at work in the production of morality; we now ask in what general direction these forces push. ”

“ The guiding principle throughout the process is the conception of their own good, comprehending, as it does, not only ease, personal comfort, and gratification of the various appetites and desires, which, in the early stages of society, are the preponderating considerations, but also those higher constituents of welfare, both individual and social, which attain an ever-increasing importance as society advances, such as are the development of the moral, the intellectual, and the aesthetic faculties ”

“ After all, whatever we may think about the cruelty and treachery of the social world, it does great things in the end. It quickens judgment, deepens intelligence, enforces the acquisition of self-control, creates forms of mental and moral strength that can not fail to be sometimes of vast importance to mankind. ”

“ And if it be true that the exercise of the social and moral faculties secures the highest degrees of enjoyment, those disparities in mental powers which give exercise to the virtues of compassion, self-denial, fortitude, and benevolence in serving the weak, and the corresponding exercises of gratitude, reverence, humility, and devotion in those who are thus benefited, then we can see the wisdom and benevolence of this gradation of mental capacity. ”

“ They insist that there has been no moral growth in human nature, as a whole, to accompany the evolution of rational faculties and powers; and that, while human conduct has been gathering its potent gains of prudence, ingenuity, skillfulness, and the like—which are qualities relative to means and ends—it has gained, on the whole, in the absolute qualities of rightness and goodness, either nothing at all or less. ”

“ In each of these great religions, virtue was that line of conduct which would be pursued by a prudent egoist. Neither of these, however, has much influence on the practical morality of our own time. For energetic people, the moral code of our time is that of "success"—the code which my generation learnt in childhood from Smiles' Self-help and which modern young men learn from efficiency experts. ”

“ Common welfare and the utilisation of nature in the service of man seem to be taken as tests of the true development of moral capabilities. The criteria themselves may be excellent; but they are not got out of the mere record: they are brought by us to its contemplation. ”

“ If we resume the moral progress of the nineteenth century, allowing for its inconsistencies, carefully weighing its negative and positive results, and taking as a balance what is original in its contribution to the ethical development of the human race, we will find that this contribution mainly lies in the direction of tolerance and of altruism. ”

“ The whole force therefore of external reward and punishment, whether physical or moral, and whether proceeding from God or from our fellow men, together with all that the capacities of human nature admit, of disinterested devotion to either, become available to enforce the utilitarian morality, in proportion as that morality is recognized; and the more powerfully, the more the appliances of education and general cultivation are bent to the purpose. ”

“ While the result of the contest is so honourable [207] and advantageous to us and to posterity, it is to be lamented that those moral and religious duties so essential to the order of society and the permanent happiness of mankind, have been too much neglected. To recover them into practice, the life and conduct of every good man should be a constant example. ”

“ And the effective influence of this firm faith on society has been to give an infinitely greater dignity to human life, to increase infinitely the moral worth of the individual, and to add a support of wonderful efficacy to those states and stages of toilsome existence which stand so much in need of such hopeful consolation. ”

“ In the first place, it is obvious that if virtues are only good because they promote, and vices only evil because they impair the happiness of mankind, the degrees of excellence or criminality must be strictly proportioned to the degrees of utility or the reverse.68 Every action, every disposition, every class, every condition of society must take its place on the moral scale precisely in accordance with the degree in which it promotes or diminishes human happiness. ”

“ As I consider virtue and vice to consist in action, and not in opinion, and as this action has its seat in the will, and not in the conscience, I shall confine my inquiries chiefly to the influence of physical causes upon that moral power of the mind, which is connected with volition, although many of these causes act likewise upon the conscience, as I shall show hereafter. The state of the moral faculty is visible in actions, which affect the well-being of society. ”

“ What we have aimed to present as a moral method is essentially this: to take into our reckoning all the factors in the situation, to take into account the other persons involved, to put ourselves into their places by sympathy as well as conceptually, to face collisions and difficulties not merely in terms of fixed concepts of what is good or fair, and what the right of each party concerned may be, but with the conviction that we need new definitions of the ideal life, and of the social order, and thus reciprocally of personality. ”

“ When this adjustment is effected, the right working of man's moral nature is secured; in other words, moral virtue is the result, while happiness is at the same time attained, inasmuch as man is now living a rational life in the best and noblest way in which such a life can be led—in accordance, namely, with excellence or virtue. ”

“ In this view of the subject, efforts and self-denial for the good of others are to be regarded not merely as duties enjoined for the benefit of others, but as the moral training indispensable to the formation of that character on which depends our own happiness. ”

“ And so daily and hourly do we feel that the moral imperfections of the community are fit subjects for such altruistic efforts as may help to raise the average morality.
While we thus recognize that our well-being depends so greatly on the well-being of others—their health and bodily capacities, their sense and knowledge, and their moral qualities—that due regard for others is essential to the happiness of self, we see further that each member of the body social gains directly by the possession and exercise of such qualities as lead or enable him to help his fellows. ”

“ And can we doubt but that this long discipline and laborious process, by which men are required to work out the elevation and improvement of their individual nature and their social condition, is imposed for a great and benevolent end? ”

“ In this case it is the function of reason to discover the forces that have made for the moralization—really the socialization—of man, and so strengthen man's moral nature by demonstrating the fundamental identity between his own welfare and that of the group to which he belongs. ”